Thursday, 23 June 2016

I'm loving the Diploma offered by the University of Tasmania. Another subject completed, and lots of information learned along the way. This article below was a submission for the final assessment in the Convict Ancestors subject. There were also two breakout articles, which I have left off the story. I might add them later as separate posts.

My 5x great-grandmother, Esther Salamon, was a formidable
convict woman, who showed great strength and fortitude throughout her long
life. After 482 days in London’s Newgate prison,a
voyage of 5 months and 19 days, through at least four marriages and de facto
partnerships, she established and ran successful businesses as a dealer, boarding
house mistress, and bathing house proprietor in the colony of Sydney, as well
as providing for her 16 children [1].

Based on Esther’s age
at her trial, later marriage, and date of death it seems that Esther was born
sometime before 19 July 1775, presumably in England. The readily available UK
census starts in 1841, by which time she is well established in Australia, and
it’s not possible to find a missing person gap in a census. Esther was Jewish
and the first of several records to confirm this fact is the list of prisoners
in Newgate prison. It is unlikely that she was baptised, and I have not been
able to locate any sacrament for her in the Church of England or non-Conformist
registers, and the birth of Jewish girls was not recorded in their own
registers [2]. As a result, I have had more than 20 years of fruitless
searching for her parents or English family of origin.

The Old Bailey Sessions House 1790, John Ellis, Corporation of
London Libraries and Guildhall Art Library

Sometime before her
conviction Esther married a Mr Spencer, as her surname was recorded as Spencer
on her Old Bailey trial records [3] and she was described as a married woman in
the Newgate prison registers.

No marriage record
between Esther and Mr Spencer has been found to date. Subsequently Esther
was convicted of theft on 16 July 1794 at age 19, and tried at The Old Bailey.
She was “indicted for stealing, on the 17th of July, two silver salt holders,
value 18s. two silver salt spoons, value 2s. two silver pepper castors, value
1£. a silver table spoon, value 14s. the goods of Jacob Ruffy.” The Newgate
Prison entry book describes her as being “19, 5’4”, dark hair, dark eyes, dark
complexion, London, married woman Jewess” [4].

A variety of records
exist detailing Esther’s ordeal in London as a prisoner in Newgate, during the
16 months she waited for decisions to be made about her pardon, and her many
months of incarceration before boarding theIndispensable.
These can be found on the London Lives website www.london.lives.org , which also links
in with the Old Bailey trials.

This example isA Continuation of the names of the several
Prisoners Confined in Newgate on the 28th Septr 1794.Here she is described as “19. 5/4 dark
hair dark Eyes dark Complexion London Jewess Marr'd”. These descriptors
are almost verbatim from theHome Office: Criminal Registers, Middlesex and
Home Office: Criminal Registers, England and Wales [5] which was
compiled at the end of July 1794 and can be found on www.Ancestry.com. One can
assume that the list in this image was drawn up from the Home Office’s July
Sessions for Middlesex document. If any of these details were incorrect in the
original document, they are likely to remain incorrect on all subsequent
documents, as Esther was illiterate. It is unknown whether she would have been
a party to the writing of the entries other than verbally responding to
questions about her age and marital status, etc. This can make searching for
other records more difficult, as we may be looking for a red herring. For
example, if Esther wasn’t indeed aged 19 at this time we are unlikely to
find a baptism record for her around 1775.

Various sources, such
as the New South Wales, Australia, Settler and Convict Lists, 1787-18346 shows
us that Esther arrived in Sydney on 30 April 1796 where she had quickly took up
with convict John Fitz, with whom she had her first two children, Joseph [7]
and Susannah [8]. Joseph, died as an infant [9] and was buried in the Old
Sydney Burial Ground where Sydney Town Hall now stands [10]. Fitz then
disappears from the records and in 1800 Esther takes up with fellow convict and
builder, Englishman Thomas Stubbs. Esther’s son, Joseph, was buried under the
name of Stubbs, so the relationship between Esther and Thomas must have begun
between Joseph’s baptism on 2 Feb 1800 and his burial in October 1800. They have
nine children together, the first being my 4x great-grandmother, Mary Anne
(Marian) Spencer Stubbs [11].

The Biographical
Database of Australia at www.bda-online.org.au holds a wealth of
records pertaining to the convict indents, musters and early church records.
From these I have created a timeline of Esther’s particulars in relation to her
convict status.

From these records it seems that Esther appears to have been
classed as “Free By Servitude” by August 1806, as indicated in the NSW General
Muster. This ties in with information from the State Records of New South Wales
website on Pardons: “Convicts with life sentences generally received pardons.
In the formative years of the colony the Governor possessed the discretion to
grant free pardons and conditional pardons as rewards for good behaviour, for
special skills or for undertaking special responsibilities. Governor Macquarie
introduced new regulations setting minimum periods to be served for both
pardons and tickets of leave.” [12] No record of a Ticket of Leave or
Conditional Pardon have ever been found for Esther, so it is assumed that her
pardon was one of these indulgences by Governor Macquarie.

These records only
touch on the great amount of information that exists regarding Esther’s life
before and after her conviction. She died at age 80, after many years of
child-bearing and business owning. In 1855 she was buried in the Jewish section
of the Devonshire Street Cemetery, which was disturbed in 1901 for the
construction of Central Railway Station. Exhumations were relocated to
Bunnerong Cemetery in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, although none of Esther’s
remains were found at the time.

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About Me

Hi. I'm Janelle and I'm a family-tree-aholic. I'm an Aussie mum of 4 who can't get enough genie time. I've been doing this research for at least 25 years and it's still far from finished. I've made some awesome friends with fellow addicts along the journey. I'm a Library Technician and loving it. My favourite phrase from customers is: Can you help me find...?